


Rhapsody from Rancor

by Karijou



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Caliginous Romance, F/M, Kismesissitude, Music, Piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karijou/pseuds/Karijou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the labyrinthine hallways of the Troll session's Derse, in a forgotten storage room, Archagent Jack Noir finds an old piano. Rated Mature for language, violent thought processes, and possibly triggering material.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhapsody from Rancor

Jack passes by the open door for what must be the thousandth time since his creation, and for once he notices something different.

He's somehow managed to keep pace with the steady stream of bureaucratic forms and trivialities, and when the workday is over he's able to walk out the door empty-handed for the first time in his miserable existence. The walls look different without the stacks of papers in your arms, he thinks for a moment, and then it's back to his standard set of daydreams. A world running red with the bodies of the fallen. Tightly-clenched fists pummeling His and Her Excellency, those Royal Sons of Bitches, until they’re smeared all over the walls like the stains they are. A world of black and white, tendrils raising and lowering from the sky, with armies bowing down before him.

But without the tax forms, parking citations and meaningless red tape in his arms, he can finally see down the long hallway. He spots the piano out of the corner of his eye, in some useless storage room he's never really bothered to examine (ain’t his job, after all), and curiosity drags him into the room.

He's off-duty. Shouldn't matter if he does a bit of work pro bono, right?

The thing is dusty, and quite possibly the most miserable inanimate object he's ever come across. Dragging a single carapaced hand along the lid just coats it a light, powdery grey. He wipes his hand on his uniform, grimacing at the mess. Makes him sick to just look at it, really.

He pries open the cover, checking that all the strings are still intact before scooting the bench out and taking a seat. It creaks under his weight, and for a brief moment he imagines breaking a leg off of the damn thing and beating the old piano with it. But the image soon passes, leaving him with nothing but an old piano and the silence of an Archagent's natural habitat.

He surreptitiously scopes out his surroundings, making absogoddamnlutely sure that he's alone, and places his fingers on the keys. What comes out could hardly be called a melody, not a single goddamn note – broken, straining, the twang of each pressed key obviously coming from a lifetime of neglect. Jack scowls, fantasizing vividly about disemboweling the ones who let this thing rot, before standing up and throwing the lid open again.

He won't be sleeping tonight, but dammit, he'll bring this thing back to working order or he'll break it from the effort.  


* * *

The next day passes without incident. Jack breezes through his work, the lack of rest only making him more twitchy, more eager to get back to the obstinate instrument left in a forgotten closet. He signs forms without reading them, glances over papers for show before tossing them in the waste, and is uncharacteristically lax on meting out proper fines. To be honest, he couldn't care less if he'd abolished the penal system altogether – he's got something to do, he has, and everything else can wait its own goddamn turn. The second the day's over, he ducks outside the office, briskly making his way down the hallway and finding the abandoned piano once more.

This time, when he takes his place in front of the upright and places his claws to the keys, an altogether different pitch is sounded. Jack grins, a toothy, intimidating sort of thing, and tries another one. The notes come out exactly as intended, the piano fulfilling its role admirably.

He sits for a moment, looking at the keys with no clear sense of purpose. He slowly plays a few notes with one hand, then switches to the other and plays for a moment more. Truth be told, he's never learned to play one of these, only seen recordings from the contraband pile, but something in him wants to learn. It's an odd sort of feeling, creating instead of destroying or confiscating, and he's not sure whether it makes him feel entirely empowered or completely powerless.

He lets the feeling, whatever it is, churn and boil for a moment inside his carapace, and then he places both hands to the piano once more.  


* * *

Days go by, then weeks, then months. Almost a year in, he finds himself playing at the piano one day - nothing revolutionary, nothing like the videos he's taken from the confiscated materials pile, but slowly getting there – and he hears a slight tapping behind him. He whirls around, knife already in his hand, and sees the Dignitary standing at the entranceway, face as unreadable as ever.

Neither says a word at first. Jack imagines dragging the knife over his subordinate and acquaintance's face, scarring deep in the other's carapace, and doesn't out of some odd sort of camaraderie. The scowl on his face twists even further, though, and after the fourth or fifth second of silence Jack finally spits out something.

“Tell anyone and I'll slit your goddamn throat.”

It's not an idle threat, and they both know it. The taller man's brow slowly raises, and Jack finds himself hating the dutiful dignitary more than almost anything in his short life. The images get bloodier and bloodier in Jack's head, threatening to spill out into action until the other finally nods.

“You shouldn't lose your focus.” When he does speak the Dignitary's words are as refined as ever, his pronunciation careful and clear. “You've been slipping in your duties, and the proper authorities aren't unaware.”

“I'll do what I fuckin' please. I'm gettin' the job done, and it ain't your place to question me. Say another word and I'll clean you like the spineless little fish you are, you hear?”

The Dignitary, so calm and devoted to his work, does not say a word. Jack stabs the other's corpse repeatedly in his mind, a thought process which makes itself clear through his expression until his underling grins in that goddamn enigmatic way of his.

“Your music is promising, sir. I'd like to hear more someday.”

He smirks, takes a perfectly measured bow, and walks away.

The next day, he sees the taller man waiting outside his music room. He swears under his breath and tries to imagine what the other's brain would feel like in his clenched fists, but the message is a sensible one and they both know it. He continues walking down the hallway, past the temptations of a dusty room and an old piano, and he leaves the building.  


* * *

He doesn't see the Dignitary anywhere near the room after that. He doesn't need to – his stupid, lousy, goddamn helpful subordinate's illustrated his point quite effectively. He limits his trips to the room, going weekly or even monthly as work dictates. He falls back into his old routine, letting papers gather until there's a stack four feet high on his desk. But whenever the anger grows too strong, a seething, whirling mass of rage in his stomach, he takes his leave. He walks away from the three fenestrated walls and sits in front of the piano, letting new pieces fall straight from his head to his fingers. He closes his eyes one day and imagines himself playing in front of a crowd, hundreds – no, thousands of Dersites watching him in adoration. He plays a new kind of song, something syncopated, something happy, something anathema to his very being and yet completely natural to his fingers.

When the song is over, he hears a soft clapping from behind him. And when he turns to face the intruder, he is greeted by Her Majesty, a horrid little smile painted across her supple lips.

“Archagent,” she whispers, sashaying her way over to the horrified official, “you never told me you were such a prodigy.”

He swallows down what he can of the bile and the hate, nodding silently at her. “Thank you, your Majesty.”

She smiles then, a wide grin across her entire face, and Jack realizes as she leans towards him that he has never loathed someone in quite this way before. He wants to hurt her. No, hurt isn't the word he's looking for. What he wants is more than that. He wants to hear her pained sobs. He wants to slice her down the middle in a single stroke and let her feel every second of it. And yet, even as his mind supplies these images, he still finds himself wanting more. He wants to reach out, to grab onto both ends of that sickly sweet little smile and to pull until his hard fingers tear straight through through her cheeks.

 _More._

He wants to drag every last bit of life out of her. He wants to flay her shell off with a knife. He wants to take things he's never dreamed of from her, to grab her and slice off her clothing. He wants to ruin her.

And he knows, as she leans in close enough for him to feel her soft exhalations, that she feels the same way.

“Why don’t you play me something, _Jack_.”

He turns as she sits on the bench next to him, dropping his fingers on the familiar keys, and bangs out a dissonant opening chord. She laughs, a saccharine melody in his ears, and its all he can do to not grab onto her throat with his bare hands right there.

“No, nothing like that. Something... sweet. Something befitting a Queen.”

He nods, turning back to the keys. And as he tries not to tremble, to let the hatred and revulsion and fear overcome him, he begins to play. A few simple chords, broken up into an arpeggio for his right hand. Simple fifths, sixths, octaves for his left – one per measure, maybe two.

She leans back, sighing behind him, and all of his anger, all of his rage, every image he's ever had of her flows through his fingers into a softly-spoken ballad. This is his love song, from him to her. Every bit of hatred that he's felt in his life comes together for this one moment. Through the keys under his fingers, he says what he could never speak aloud to the woman next to him.

The tempo increases. His fingers move in ways he's never tried to make them move. He moves as he plays, letting the notes carry his body, and for a single moment he is able to forget about the woman sitting by his side.

But soon, the song comes to a close. His fingers begin to slow down, and soon he is aware once more of the royal's gaze. He lowers his head, shivering a bit from revulsion and something else he can't place just yet but will later identify as 'afterglow.'

When he doesn't say anything else, the Queen stands from the bench. “Beautiful.” She walks to the door, her hips clearly swaying underneath the light fabric wrapped around her. “Maybe someday I'll listen to you again, hm?”

She leaves. Jack finds himself unable to move, petrified to the spot. Seconds pass, then minutes, and when he finally trusts his legs to move again he stumbles out of the room and heads home.

The next day, he finds the smashed remains of his piano being moved to the disposal sector. He says nothing to the regulator overseeing the process, nodding at him for a job well done before heading to his desk. He signs the paperwork he finds, an order from the Black Queen to empty the trash out of the storage rooms in hallway 15B, and goes about barely finishing his work as usual.

He waits until he is alone that night, and he screams until he can taste the coppery red blood trickling like water down his dry throat.

He pretends it's hers.  


* * *

Years (but not many) come and go, and the Archagent finds himself walking on the ruins of a forgotten planet. The Brute behind him huffs and puffs as he makes his way through the red desert, complaining of the sun and the sand stuck in his rags and everything. The Droll hums, an aimless little tune with no semblance of structure or song to it, and Jack hates the little bastard for it – but not too much. Just enough to irritate him, and nothing more.

They stop in a dilapidated building and make a fire to survive the night, any central heating system long since having broken down. Jack doesn't sit with the others – he wanders about the place, not bothering to listen to the Droll's well-rehearsed story yet again as he heads into the basement.

He passes by an open door for what must be the thousandth time since his banishment, and for once he notices something different.

He drops his makeshift spear, stumbling into the room and placing a single carapaced hand on the grand piano. It comes off dusty, a thick grey coat on his hands, and the sight brings that strange feeling to his throat again. He gingerly pries open the hood and plays a single chord from his standing position, and when the thing twangs angrily at him the warmth throughout his body intensifies.

There will be tuning to do. All sorts of repair, really, strings and hammers and the ivory keys he knows so well. But really, he thinks as he looks at all the alien instruments scattered across the room, he's got nothing but time now.

A note flutters down from the bench, and he picks it up without a second thought. The language is indecipherable to him, a lot of weird scrawly symbols and alien gobbledygook, but even if he doesn't speak Alternian, he knows that that's a spade at the end of it. He doesn't even know what it means, but the symbol is all he needs to spark something great within him.

He imagines a metropolis, with buildings towering above the desert. No tacky uniforms, not for his men – no, they're a crisp bunch, he’ll have to find something that looks good on them. Those hats he saw a while back, yeah, those’ll do the job just fine. White streetlamps will illuminate the green buildings around them, lights like he's only seen in discarded recordings in a pile of contraband. And best of all, they'll rule the streets of the town - their town - with a fist made of lead. Metaphorically. The fist, not the lead.

He imagines all four of them, the black-as-midnight crew, playing before a crowd. Spades, that'll be his new name. The Dignitary will be Diamonds, structured and rigid, and the Brute can have the Hearts he loves so much. That leaves Clubs to the Droll, and honestly the simple little bastard will probably love that. The idea that someone might disagree with the new naming convention doesn’t quite make it, and even if it did he’s hardly the kind of guy to give a shit.

He storms back into the main room, that same angry scowl on his face but with a goddamn purpose now, and yells that everyone better get used to this place because they've found a new base of operations. The Droll lights up with excitement as Jack- no, Spades gets near, Hearts stares with that confused frown on his face, and Diamonds... he just grins. He's seen his superior like this before.

“Tell us what we're doing, boss.”

Spades Slick smirks.

“We're makin' a goddamn city, that's what.”


End file.
